


Send It Off In A Letter To Yourself

by SegaBarrett



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Epistolary, M/M, Others Mentioned - Freeform, Suicide mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam writes letters to the only person who might understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Send It Off In A Letter To Yourself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosied/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Life on Mars, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title from "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" by Steely Dan.

Dear 2006 Sam,

This is a stupid idea. I know that it is a stupid idea and yet I find myself doing it anyway. I suppose I may be a man who never learns. Or maybe I’ve learned too much.

My mother has moved out of her flat and left many things behind.

Things of mine, technically, or the me of this time at least. I’m not sure how to qualify it, and I’m not sure how I feel about seeming like a voyeur in my own past. I can’t help but think that there are some things that may be better left uncovered, and yet I continue to uncover them.

I am a man who never learns.

And what about Gene? Does he learn? Can someone who is quite possibly a figment of my own imagination (something conjured up by my brain to try and make sense of the unintelligible, and if so, what does he mean?) learn anything at all?

And yet I hope that he does, and that he can. 

Because in this place, much of the time, he’s all that I have. There’s Annie, of course, but sometimes she seems worlds away and we don’t seem to be in the same book, let alone on the same page. We’re two ships passing on the darkest and foggiest of nights.

I’m not sure why I’m writing you this letter – it’s very unlikely that you will ever see it. After all, if this has all been in my head, this letter doesn’t actually exist… and if I’m really back in time, well – where are you?

So many questions that I don’t think I will ever find any answers too.

Yet there is one that I know. What happened to my dad? What happened to Vic Tyler, the man I always hoped would come back?

He was a monster.

That man – my dad – was a monster.

And I hope, Future Sam, that you never, ever know.

Sincerely,  
(I suppose)  
1973 Sam

***

Dear 2006 Sam,

My mother and… well, myself, have moved away, and they have left things.

Gene didn’t know that I spent half the day gathering things up. It would have been considered Breaking and Entering if he was being official. Thankfully, Gene is so rarely official.

I found a tiny diary that I had kept when I was a child. Back when the world was still big and monsters only existed in my head.

I didn’t even remember that I had written a diary back then. I copied one of the pages. I’ve pasted the photocopy below:

_Dear Journal,_

_Today my mum told me that we are moving far away. I don’t know why, and I hope that my dad can find us where we’re going. Mum said he had to go away for awhile, but I hope it’s not long. He promised to take me to a match when he gets back. So I hope he hurries back._

_I don’t want to go to a new school and make new friends. I like my old ones. I hate this._

_Oh well, I guess I had better pack you up and bring you with me and I can tell you all about whatever happens at my new school. Mum’s calling me now so I better hurry off._  
\- Sam  


Do you remember any of this, 2006 Sam? Because I don’t, which only makes everything that much more confusing. Some things didn’t happen this way in the past – or maybe they did, and I just don’t remember.

Will I ever remember? Will I ever piece it together?

The more I think about it, the more I know that Gene has to be involved somehow. But how? 

Anything you’ve got, 2006 Sam – I’m waiting.

1973 Sam

***

Dear 2006 Sam,

Of all the things I didn’t think I would be writing in these letters, a… well, I guess I might as well write it – a confession of love for Gene Hunt was not one of them.

But a lot can change under uneasy circumstances. Isn’t that what they show in all of those Coming of Age novels I had to read back in school? Back… Well, back now, in a way. It’s all topsy-turvy like I’m trapped in Alice in Wonderland or something. 

This could all be in my head while I sit in a coma in the hospital, and I can’t afford to get so sucked into this that I forget what is real – that I forget about Maya and about my life back home. About my real mother, not this odd version that my brain or time travel has conjured up. I am not suited to playing Marty McFly.

But I may be suited, in the strangest of ways, to Gene Hunt. He is an odd, infuriating sort of person, and for the longest time I wished I could just walk away from him entirely.

This shouldn’t even be something I’m writing to you about – of all the parts of this experience that I want to document, I feel like this should be the least of all of them but… Maybe I just want someone to know, or maybe I want myself to know, and myself to remember.

Because some days it gets harder and harder to remember why I am here.

I was approached by a man today – Frank Morgan. He says he wants to take down Gene, and part of me wants to help him. Maybe that’s the part of me that wants, no, needs, to get back to you, to being you.

But the other part…

I shouldn’t listen to that other part. Or should I?

The ever-confused,  
1973 Sam

***

Dear 2006 Sam,

I need to get back – I need to get back to you. It’s driving me crazy. Sometimes I’m sure that I can tell something is happening back in your time, but it seems farther and farther away each time. I can’t handle it.

If I could find some way to send these, if I could connect with someone in my own time… Then maybe I could ask questions. It’s not like I can go to Chris or Ray about this kind of thing – and Ray hates me anyway. The only other person I feel close to is Annie, and somehow I don’t think telling her how I feel about Gene is the best way to make our friendship stronger. She wants something from me that I can’t give, and I’ve always thought it’s because I’m not from this time.

But maybe it’s because of Gene, because I can’t stop thinking about him. To write it that way makes it sound like some creepy “Every Breath You Take” deal, but it’s true.

And it’s not as if I want to be thinking about him. If you asked me before if I even thought of men that way… It’s not as if I would be horrified by it or anything – leave that to Gene or Ray – but it’s not something that was ever really on my radar, ever since I was a little kid and trying to catch the eye of a pretty girl.

Maybe I had just never met the right person. But it’s not as if the right person could be this man who may not even really exist?

I don’t have time to think about that now – no, that’s a lie. I, in fact, have all the time in the world. I doubt it’s exactly like the Matrix where, if I die here, I die in the coma, but there, no doubt, are stakes. The question is to figure out what is important and what isn’t.

Is Gene important, or is he a distraction?

He’s calling me now. I’d better run. Maybe I’ll have more to report to you tonight, or tomorrow. What day is it, even?

~ 1973 Sam

***

Dear 2006 Sam,

I wish I had a picture of you, or something to remember you by. It’s like you’re a friend who died a long time ago, who I don’t know if I ever really knew. It’s certainly not like you’re me anymore, and that scares me.

Frank Morgan tells me things. He says things that seem like they mean something, but maybe they don’t mean anything at all. I’ve been writing and writing until my hands hurt, and maybe until they bleed because I saved Gene again.

I will save Gene again and again and maybe that is my downfall.

Maybe in some universe that will have always been my downfall.

And I hate it.

~ 1973 Sam

***

Dear 1973 Sam,

I don’t know what I thought would happen, and I don’t know what I hoped would happen. But it wasn’t this.

Maya is gone. She has gone away and I should probably feel something about that, but I can’t find it in myself to feel anything about anything.

Everything seems too-white, clinical, broken and shattered and I don’t know where to turn. So this may be my last letter to you. I should have been better to you when I had you.

I should have been better to Gene, too. As much as they tell me – as Dr. Morgan tells me – that it was all in my head, that it was delusions conjured up by neurons firing full-force in my brain, I don’t know how that can be true when they all felt so real to me.

And I can still hear them screaming.

So I have one last shot, one comet out of the blue that is so unlikely to hit its target as to be some sort of crazy daredevil stunt that will probably result in…

In me going away, too, but for longer and for good.

But I have to try.

Gene, I’m coming. If you ever read this, if you ever get to 2006. I’m coming for you.

I love you.

~ 2006 Sam

***

**Dear Sam,**

**I’m a nob jockey who writes in his diary all day while I let my DCI solve all my crimes! By the way, I have an arse for a head and I write to myself because I’m a right wanker!!**

**But seriously Tyler. Get it moving. When you read this, I’ll already be at the station, fighting some actual crime, and you’ll be waking up and looking at yourself in the mirror.**

**Sometimes I don’t even know why I put up with you. You’re so lucky.**

**Your DCI,  
** **Gene Hunt  
** **The Good  
** **The Bad  
** **The Hungover**


End file.
